movingtoportugal

Apologies for my prolonged absence! Our first festive season in Portugal has been mixed, to say the least – so here follows a bit of an update. Much as I am a “glass-half-full” kind of person, there have been some negatives in the past few weeks, so in the interests of being fully representative of our time here, I shall tell you of the bad bits as well as the good!

Snow in London

Shortly after my last post we took a trip back to London to see some family, do some shopping and do some work. We were lucky to see some snow while we were there – snow, which I am sure you know, still shows no sign of abating three weeks on. A few days was quite enough for us! Our trip back was something of a high point – we wondered if we would yearn to be back in London again, but it was, in fact, quite the opposite. The same old things that annoyed the hell out of us still annoyed the hell out of us, and we were counting down the minutes until our return to Portugal before we got through Gatwick airport.

We were amazed that, after just 2 months in Portugal, we had already got used to a life without there being four more people in each square metre than there is really room for, found the sheer amount of “do this….do that….don’t do this” signage and accompanying announcements maddening and, despite having lived in the big city for over a decade, found the whole place SO fast and SO busy. It’s incredible how quickly different becomes normal.

We had a great time seeing our friends and family, felt smug that a city the size of London couldn’t manage to produce civic Christmas decorations that came close to those in Tavira, and had a lucky escape out of Gatwick, despite the weather, to return home for Christmas.

My wife had to work from home right up until the end of Christmas Eve, on the first year in five that I had a decent, long break. Perhaps next year we will manage to co-ordinate our diaries a little better and finally both have a long Christmas holiday! As a result, Christmas itself, though wonderful, was all over a little too quick. We managed to construct a full English-style Christmas lunch, including frozen sprouts – we were sadly unable to find any parsnips – perhaps next year we will drive to Spain, where apparently they are available!

While the UK had the snow, we got the rain – and not just a little – they say when it rains, it pours. “They” are correct. With only a small respite on boxing day, we got used to the water crashing down, both outside, and at some points, through gaps in our window frames. Here began our issues. With the rain came the damp, and with the damp came the mould. Day after day, we kept discovering more walls in the house dripping with water, and mould appearing in more colours and varieties than on a top-class Christmas cheese-board. We were aware houses in the Algarve are prone to damp but local people have informed us that the quantity of rain, and the amount of accompanying damp is truly unusual, the same as the extreme cold has been in the UK this year. We are currently engaged in a running battle involving air conditioning, dehumidifiers, towels, bleach sprays etc. It is not fun, and the atmosphere in the house has made us ill, but we will win this war!

Tavira Fireworks

New Year’s Eve came around, and as we were both quite unwell, both with mould-related issues and the after effects of over-indulgence in rich food and wine, we had a quiet night in and watched Tavira’s fireworks display from the roof terrace. The Portuguese certainly know how to put on a show – it was a truly breathtaking display – lasting about 15 minutes, set to music, and genuinely far more impressive than anything I have ever seen in the UK. It made us very proud of our little town.

The following evening though, things swung the other way. We took a wander into Tavira to watch a band playing in a temporary arena on our town square. We were enjoying a drink and really rather impressed with the rock cover-versions on offer! We spoke about how agreeable the atmosphere was and how “they could never do this in London without a load of police and security.”

Five minutes after this remark there was a huge explosion about three feet behind us. A yob had thrown a firework directly at us. Had it landed any closer, it would have done us serious harm. We were truly shaken – it was a big enough explosion to cause the band to stop playing and many people scattered, appearing to look for the perpetrators.

This incident marked the beginning of the biggest crisis of confidence we had experienced since our arrival in Portugal. The helplessness of not knowing enough of the language to say “who the f*%k did that, did you see anything?” along with feeling ill, and having a mouldy house, led to our first serious doubts since our arrival.

I am very pleased to say this only lasted a couple of days. Some chance encounters with typically friendly Portuguese people in the following days, a bit of sunshine, and the incredible service from the estate agent in helping with our mould problems quickly restored our faith. We love it again now – but as I said at the start of the post, it has certainly been a mixed few weeks!

Apologies again for the gap between posts, I won’t let it happen again

Technorati Tags: algarve, christmas, fireworks, london, moving to portugal, portugal, tavira

Tavira's Christmas angel

We had an eventful weekend in the Algarve. It started off with a wonderful walk around Tavira looking at the Christmas lights. When you think about some of the awful “too cool to actually be any good” displays that have adorned London’s Regent Street is recent years it is fantastic to see Christmas done right. As I mentioned in a previous post (http://www.movingtoportugal.org/?p=175) they really go for Christmas in a big way here in Portugal and the lights in Tavira, along with a natural setting that is already pretty stunning, makes for the kind of Christmas display dreams are made of. To add to the atmosphere, outdoor speakers have been placed strategically around the town piping Christmas music out as you walk around the pretty streets. (Although hearing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” when it’s 18 degrees Celsius and sunny is rather surreal!)

On Sunday we went for a drive west to visit some cove beaches around the Carvoeiro area. All of the guidebooks advise you to steer well clear of these areas during high season as they get absolutely mobbed with tourists, leading to perfectly justified comments that these areas have been “spoiled” by tourism. Out of season though, you get to appreciate the incredible natural beauty that led to these places becoming over-run in the first place. To start with we visited Benagil – a small cove beach with the trademark stunning cliffs behind it. Despite being mid-December there were a couple of hardy souls sunbathing and, protected from the wind by the cliffs, and in the direct sun it was actually pretty warm.

We stopped for a quick drink but were unfortunately served by a young lady for whom the term “moody little cow” would be quite flattering. Having encountered plenty of nightmare Brits who don’t even attempt a “Bom Dia,” I can understand a bit of negativity but we do try our best with Portuguese and were, as always, very polite. The locals in the cafe were getting friendly smiles from the same person, so the grumpy behaviour was reserved for us. A shame. Still, if she ever fancies moving to the UK I’m sure she has a great career waiting for her in the call-centre industry.

We then headed to Praia Da Marinha. A stunning spot with amazing cliffs and rock formations. We went for a short walk east along the cliff-tops, and again, once warmed up from scrambling down the rocks, could easily have been fooled into thinking it was a warm spring day, despite it being nearly Christmas. As with many places in Portugal, it is hard to describe in words the beauty of some of these cove beaches, and we never seem to take a photo that does them justice. There is, however, one below that should give the general idea.

Cove at Praia Da Marinha

After our walk, we decided to check out Algarve Shopping, a huge shopping centre in Guia, near Albufeira. It was at this point that the weekend got less pleasant. A couple of posts back I was extolling the virtues of shopping centres here in Portugal and how they make a good day out destination. Well, this place for me was the exception. It was frantically busy, not surprising with it being nearly Christmas, but the whole atmosphere of the place just wasn’t the same as Tavira Gran Plaza or Algarve Forum in Faro. This really did feel like “spoiled touristy Portugal,” and I imagine it being equally unpleasant for all of the Summer season. It felt like being back in London, and we couldn’t wait to get away. To top it all, as we were leaving, I had to face my biggest fear – a large black rodent running across the car-park. We won’t be going back to Algarve Shopping! The only saving grace for this part of the day was the sunset as we left (see photo below.)

Now, with only a couple of weeks until Christmas, we have to take a quick trip back to the UK. I think it is a good sign of how we are settling in that, other that being excited about seeing friends and family, it is truly the last thing we want to do. It is strange to start yearning to be back here before we have even left. Having said that, when we get back it will be the first time we will have “come back home” to Portugal.  That feels exciting.

I will leave you with a trio of other photos of Christmas, Algarve style. Boas Festas!

View from the Roman Bridge Tavira

Beach at Benagil, mid December

Sunset over Algarve Shopping, Guia

Technorati Tags: algarve, algarve shopping, beaches, Carvoeiro, christmas, guia, moving to portugal, portugal, rodent, sunset, tavira

A reader of my blog asked me the what I missed about the UK since I moved. I have been meaning for some time to post a “negatives” list to balance out all of the sunshine and new experiences, so here it is! People back at home in the cold and rain could be forgiven for thinking we have just embarked on an eternal holiday when they see the photos and blog posts, but the fact is that you do still have to deal with all the day-to-day crap that comes up (well most of it!)

We don't miss the M25!

SO: Here is what we miss so far:

1. UNDERSTANDING: When the people at the town hall refuse to give you a fiscal number, or your mobile internet stops working, or you miss a delivery from the postman and get a card through the door, you take in for granted in your home country that you understand what do about it, and know how to complain if necessary. This is not possible when you only understand a smattering of the language. We wish we had had more time to get ahead with the language before we came. You start out reasonably intelligent, get on a 2 hour flight and when you get to the other end you become rather stupid. Quite a strange feeling.

2. CENTRAL HEATING: Friends in England don’t seem to believe us but in the Algarve it gets cold at night – and when you are in a house with tiled floors, designed to keep the heat OUT, it can get really bloody cold. Air conditioning heats individual rooms very well, it doesn’t ever make a house feel cosy and toasty when you walk in. This one surprised us.

3. FOODS: Taramasalata and poor quality sausage rolls from Greggs – that’s it so far.

4. FRIENDS: I was starting to tire of Facebook, Twitter etc. in the time running up to our move, but these things become a real lifeline when you are thousands of miles away. There are still times though, once a week or so, when you really miss human contact with the people who have known you for years. I don’t this this will ever change.

At this point in typing the post I have had to call my wife to ask for ideas. The fact is for me that is it. After ten minutes of intense thought, all she has come up with is: “the potential for snow at Christmas,” “stepping onto a carpet when getting out of bed in the morning,” and “electrical sockets that don’t spark when you unplug something.” We both agree that we are scraping the barrel for ideas and that it is a lot easier to come up with things we don’t miss!

So: here is a quick list of the things we DON’T miss!

Just another December day

1. Traffic – and just the general amount of time it can take to do what should be simple things in London.

2. Celebrity Culture.

3. Greedy, money focussed London city types.

4. Overpriced, poor quality food (apart from Greggs sausage rolls!)

5. Extortionate Council tax.

6. Wine that costs more the 3 euros.

7. Darkness, rain, wind, sleet, hail etc.

7. Being in a perpetual rush.

8. Routine rudeness from strangers and people working in “customer service” roles.

9. Paying for parking.

10. Overpriced public transport.

11. Our old neighbours awful piano playing.

We have hardly had to think to come up with those eleven and we could go on! But I think you probably get the picture, we love it here so far, feel almost constantly lucky and thankful, and, so far at least, we wouldn’t change a thing

VNQQKYZSZWUC

Technorati Tags: london, Moving abroad, politics, portugal

We needn’t have worried that being in Portugal wouldn’t feel as ‘Christmassy’ as being in cold England. The Portugese seem to go in for Christmas in an even bigger way than the Brits, probably helped by the two bank holidays at the start of December on the 1st and 8th!

Being a country populated by 98% Roman Catholics, the religious aspect is obviously more widely important than in the UK, illustrated by the huge range of nativity scenes available in shops and as part of town decorations. This said, the consumer-Christmas that we all know and love/hate (delete as applicable) is alive and well in Portugal as well.

Yesterday we set off to buy our tree – we were originally going to go to the Portugese equivalent of the UK Homebase or B&Q (Leroy Merlin,) but got caught in our first traffic jam in 4 weeks(!) on the outskirts of Faro. We happened to drive past the huge Forum shopping centre and the beautiful Christmas lights drew us in.

Shopping Centres are treated as a real day-out destination in Portugal. They are similar to centres in the UK, but probably a bit closer to the ones you would find in America. Generally though, a shopping centre is the same the world over – a load of shops on a few levels, with a big food-court at the top. In Portugal you usually find a large hypermarket at the bottom and a multiscreen cinema somewhere as well. 

The difference though, is the atmosphere. I associate shopping centres in the UK with chavvy kids and queues at Primark. Here, the atmosphere is relaxed, and there always seems to be a large outside area with pavement cafes and people drinking Uma Bica (an espresso) or Um Imperial (a small beer.) The opening hours are long – where we visited yesterday was open until midnight, and still buzzing with people when we left at 10.30pm.

There are a lot of families, some clearly on a day out with 3 or maybe even 4 generations of the family out together. Last, but not least, the food court, which,  although it has plenty of junk food outlets (including the first McDonalds we have encountered in Portugal so far,) there also seem to be some local and healthy options on offer – we had a bit of a nose at peoples plates and saw a lot of things we would like to try, rather than “shit-in-a-tray” that we would rather avoid!

As we sat under the lights of the very impressive tree, drinking some delicious coffee, which we still can’t believe is only about 60 cents per cup, we really started to understand the point of this “shopping centre as a day out” thing. Do a bit of shopping, have a decent lunch, have a beer, watch a movie, have a coffee, bit more shopping, another beer or two, perhaps a snack, then grab everything needed from the supermarket and head home. Obviously, as a fairly typical man, the fact that “have a beer” can be included in the list makes a day of shopping seem a lot more attractive, though I couldn’t see this working particularly well in binge-drinking Britain!

As Christmas gets nearer, I’m sure the pace at these places will get a lot more frantic and will probably be as hellish in the few days before the big day as they are everywhere else in the world, but as far as last night was concerned, we actually had a really good time at a shopping centre, which isn’t something I thought I would ever say.

Otherwise, it all seems very similar to Christmas back in England, and with the current cold nights, it is suitably chilly to feel right. Even the Christmas songs playing in the supermarket are the same selection which my wife adores but that start to drive me to distraction by around 15th December! We are enjoying trying different festive foods, and all the Portugese versions of the things we have at home as well. My father-in-law is arriving in a few days with a few essentials we haven’t been able to get (i.e. bread sauce mix,) the tree is going up this week, and then we can start to look forward to our first Portugese Christmas. I can’t wait.

Seasons greetings to all!

Technorati Tags: beer, christmas, christmas shopping, coffee, homebase, portugal, shopping

Heading East towards the Spanish border, we arrived at Montegordo. The guidebooks had warned us this would be a brash and over-touristy resort, but I must admit I have a bit of a fondness for tourist tat (perhaps because I grew up near Great Yarmouth,) so we were eager to see what it was like.

Montegordo is only about 2km away from the Spanish border and it did have the feel of a Spanish resort. Yes, there were plenty of high-rises and nasty 60s and 70s hotel buildings. Yes, there were more places doing burgers and pizzas than genuine Portuguese cuisine and YES, there was a cheesy cocktail bar that was actually called the “Copacabana!”

Off season though, it was hard not to be charmed by the lovely big beach, so long as you stayed facing the sea and didn’t concentrate on the high-rise skyline behind it. Is seemed somehow to be a lot more sheltered and warm than around Tavira, despite being no more than 15 miles away, and were it not for the vast amount of washed up jellyfish and lack of protective footwear, I may have been tempted to have a November swim. We had a very pleasant meal of giant prawns and freshly grilled sole. Unfortunately it went downhill with the dessert which had been sprinkled with cinnamon that tasted like it had been scraped from the back of a musty old wardrobe. The owner had been so nice we didn’t have the heart to tell him, so we went and paid inside and beat a hasty retreat before he realised we hadn’t eaten it (seems it may take a while before we stop acting English!)

On the road back, we turned off to visit another beach called Praia Verde, (green beach,) so named because of the forest on the dunes behind it, which is quite unique in this part of Portugal. The beach is at the end of a tourist complex, which you can imagine being very busy in season, but off-season it was truly deserted. There is something quite strange about these places when there is no-one there at all, they make me think of the deserted amusement park in the 80s film “Big” with Tom Hanks. They are both romantic and slightly spooky. The beach itself was beautiful – like Montegordo without the high-rises, or indeed any of the people. This would be a wonderful place to come back to, but you would need to take everything you could possibly need as there are no facilities open at all off-season.

We didn’t hang around that long, as we needed to make use of the kind of sanitary facilities not available at this time of year(!) As we drove away there was someone who obviously lived on the complex playing with his young child in the car-park and I found myself wondering whether living somewhere which is SO quiet for half of the year would be very liberating or very lonely, and couldn’t decide either way….

Technorati Tags: beach, Food, montegordo, portugal, praia verde, prawns

The day finally arrived. On Wednesday 4^th November, my wife and I pulled up outside Gatwick airport, no longer in possession of a house, car or anything tying us to England. It marked the start of a very surreal period in our lives which is currently ongoing….

I loaded all of the cases and bags onto a trolley and my wife left me there to take the hire car back. I struggled across Gatwick with everything and checked into our hotel.

For the next couple of hours I explored the facilities Gatwick airport has to offer (surprisingly few to entertain you after an hour or so, as it happens, and I was almost glad of the frantic thirty minutes I wasted retrieving my mobile phone which I managed to drop in the amusement arcade!) By now, my other half should have arrived back and I made plans to go for a celebratory drink and take my wife shopping for beach attire at the few shops in the airport.

Unfortunately my wife, despite having lived in London for around ten years, is not a seasoned rail traveller – she usually drives, and the chaos of Clapham Junction had served to give her one last London story to tell. Whether she got on the wrong half of the train or fell asleep and missed Gatwick is still being debated, but she ended up zooming down to the South Coast to a place called Barnham, about 5 miles from Bognor Regis. She had to get off, wait for another train and then begin an hours journey back to Gatwick airport, during which she stood up to ensure she stayed awake. Sadly the shops were by now shut, so no beach-wear shopping. There was just time to have one last bit of junk food from Burger King before getting a few hours sleep ready for our early flight.

The morning came and it was time to start our new life. As a treat we had booked “speedy boarding” with Easyjet, which entitled us to a separate check-in desk and allowed us to board the plane first. I have to say that unless I run out of money, I will always do this in the future. The £16 it cost allowed us to feel like we were travelling with a civilised airline rather than a budget one and it avoided the whole “Boarding Group A or B” scrum that always ensues and highlights the very worst parts of human nature. We secured seats on the exit row with good legroom and had an uneventful flight into Faro.

It was an incredibly strange feeling, flying into Portugal on one-way tickets and I almost wish I could have been more aware of what was going on. It was surreal and overwhelming and all my wife and I managed to keep saying to each other was “this is so WIERD!”

We arrived in Faro and, after an interesting experience with the automated gates I can now use with my high tech biometric passport (I got trapped inside the gates alongside two other passengers – hurray for technology,) we retrieved our cases.

We were met by the car hire man, who we recognised from past trips and told him we were here to stay. He offered two pieces of advice to us; firstly he said that we would really struggle to slow to the pace of Portugese life and secondly that we would, in the coming months, keep doubting ourselves and our decision. Just ten days on, I have already come to see the huge wisdom in these pieces of advice, but more on that in future posts!

We drove into Tavira, and once again I wished I could take more in. We were almost silent, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we had done and at the same time, more excited and alive than I had felt in years. After some fun and games getting our head around Tavira’s one way system we got to the estate agents, and within an hour, we had the keys to our new home.

It is funny how things change in your memory, as the living room and kitchen were smaller than we remembered, and the roof and ground floor terraces were bigger – still, given our plans to spend a lot more time outside this was the right way around!

We went on a small expedition out to the town and came back with our first takeaway meal – piri-piri chicken, duck rice (arroz de pato,) chips, salad, 4 Sagres beers and 2 desserts – all for the bargain price of 11 euros. The general consensus was “yep, we are going to like it here.” The eating was good, and full of excitement and anticipation for the future.

The rest of the day was lost to excitedly exploring our new house, and we also visited our local bar. We introduced ourselves as having just moved in and were welcomed warmly by the owner of the bar who insisted on giving us our second drink on the house. We then had a rather stilted conversation, due to the fact that no one could understand each other, but this gave us the determination to learn something new to say to him each time we visited.

By the time the time came to turn in for the night, the fact we lived here had still far from sunk in, but we were here. A most exciting day.

Technorati Tags: arroz de pato, chicken piri piri, clapham junction, duck rice, easyjet, frango, moving to portugal, piri piri, portugal, tavira

It’s been a while since I moaned about London life and seeing as we leave in 9 days (typing that just pushed my heart rate up!) I imagine this will be my last little political rant….

As a TV show, I can’t say I actually have any issue with the concept of “The X Factor,” but the reason it is right up at the top of the list of “things I hate” right now is how it highlights the vacuous way of life everyone seems to be being encouraged to adopt.

Several times per day I am becoming tempted to deactivate my Facebook account as yet another of my friends posts some inane comment about “The  X-Factor.” Visiting the offices of my clients all I am hearing is chatter about “Miss Frank” or “The Twatty Twins.”  As if this wasn’t enough, the tabloid front-pages scream out more “X-Factor” exclusives everywhere you go.

All of this is producing within me emotions from mild depression to actual FURY! As well as religiously watching this drivel, people are voting on it, talking about it, twittering about it, reading about it and texting about it. Some of these people are my friends, and are, at least in some cases, quite level headed, interesting people. Are the government in some way complicit in allowing this nonsense to slowly rot away our collective intelligence?!

Some really significant stuff goes on in the world. The country is at war in a couple of places, the politicians and the bankers are all stealing our money, and the British National Party are on “Question Time,” yet nobody talks about any of that. People prefer to be anaesthetised for weeks at a time by the antics of wannabe fast-track celebrities, while Cheryl Cole and some others decide which one of the contenders gets to record a shit ballad for Christmas number one, thus financing Simon Cowell’s next party, and next teeth.

When people seem to be putting more thought into who to vote for in The X Factor than who to vote for to run the country, something has surely gone horribly wrong? I am really struggling with the fact that this isn’t glaringly obvious to more people around me.  The UK seem to have adopted apathy as the key lifestyle choice and “not my problem” as the collective mantra. Unless people begin to wake up and take more interest in the society around them than the sad little lives of Jordan and Kerry Katona, I really to fear for the future of our culture.

Moving back to the key topic of moving to Portugal, I am sad to say that, yes, they do have X Factor in Portugal (in fact across most of Europe and even “XSeer Al Najah” throughout the Arab world, according to Wikipedia.) The silver-lining in that particular cloud though, is that I won’t understand a word when people are talking about it. The same will go for politics – I am going to go out of my way to not know about it – that way I may not feel so cross all the time!

Technorati Tags: cheryl cole, moving to portugal, politics, portugal, x factor

In order to take my mind off the intense pain of my dental abscess while the antibiotics do their thing, I have spent a lot of time on the web over the past couple of days.

As a keen cook, exploring all of the the different food Portugal has to offer is one of the things I am most looking forward to – and the fact that I am currently only able to eat foods which require little or no chewing has found me looking lustfully at food-related websites. This web-surfing landed me at www.continente.pt – the website of a Portugese supermarket chain. I have spent a fair bit of time browsing this site to get an idea of how much things are going to cost when we arrive in Portugal.

I thought I might make more sense of the foodstuffs if I translated the whole site into English with Google Translate – it is not perfect but it generally gives you a good chance of working out what something means. That said, it has left me with a few unanswered questions this time:

1. If I fancy a stew, does “diced biological calf” taste as nice as stewing steak?

"Cool hunting" anyone?

2. Will eating “a piece of cool hunting” improve my street-cred?

3. Does “dogfish, whole, clean” imply that unless specified other fish is “dirty”?

4. Can I really buy a “small horse” for 40cents?

Discoveries like this are when I remember what enormous fun this journey is going to be, and with the stress of moving, we don’t often get a chance to remember that at the moment. I can’t believe it is less than three weeks until we go!

I’m off to find out what kind of fish a “cool hunting” is….

Technorati Tags: continente, Food, Moving abroad, moving to portugal, portugal

Burn baby burn

This is the week when it all really starts to happen. The letter giving notice on our house in London is typed and signed, and as of tomorrow, my clients start to be told what is happening.

It is scary stuff, yet somehow it seems to have removed a lot of the stress. It turns out waiting to take action is more stressful than taking action! Everything can now be “out in the open” and I can stop leading a double life.

Burning bridges, it turns out, can be rather theraputic.

Tavira is now just 63 days away If someone could stick half a dozen sardinhas on a BBQ for me somewhere, and chill a couple of bottles of Vinho Verde that would be great!

Technorati Tags: burning bridges, portugal, sardinhas, tavira

Algarve orange trees

It is now less than five months to move day. Things are now moving at quite a pace, and it seems especially real now people are starting to book flights to come out and see us after we have moved. We’ve got past the stage where we realised all the things we were going to miss about London – a tube strike, a few too many hangovers and the brief early summer rapidly turning back to grey, wet gloom soon got us back on the right track (the one that ends in Tavira!)

Five months really isn’t long, and I started thinking about everything we have got to get done. Aside from having to sell the contents of a house, a car, a business and an inflatable chill-out room, we have to book flights, arrange shipping of our things, and deal with far too many call-centers when we come to changing addresses and suchlike. We also have to continue living a pretty hectic city life and do all the various social things we just have to do because “we won’t be here next year.”

I am trying to decide on which units I should use to count down the time until our move to portugal. Which should I use:

1. Number of incoming work emails – I get around 525 per week so 10,500 emails.

2. Bottles of Magners cider to consume – about 160 (that figure probably half way between the true amount and what I would admit to the doctor!)

Lisbon Cakes - better than Starbucks!

3. Remaining days to endure London’s transport network – 80- ish – now that IS exciting.

4.  Starbucks Frappuccinos -20 – (I’m down to one per week.)

5. Cigarettes – 1400 – REALLY have to give up before they are only 3euro per packet.

6. Sleeps - 140 – not including Sunday siestas

7. VAT Returns – 2 – Yay!

8. People who accidentally delete a file on their PC and blame the IT department – 27 approx.

9. Days of good weather – er, 3? The UK has been promised a good summer by the media but don’t they say that every year?

Can anyone suggest any more units of measurement?

Technorati Tags: Moving abroad, portugal